Familiar Spirit

She paused then, and let herself savor her triumph. She was weak and sweating and weary, and her arm ached intolerably, but she had won. Jade was gone. Holding the hammer in her right hand and letting her left arm dangle, throbbing, by her side, Sarah turned towards Valerie.

She was still in the corner, curled almost into a fetal position, her breathing shallow, her face closed.

If Jade won, after all this—

She couldn’t stand to be inactive, passively awaiting the outcome of the battle between Valerie and Jade. There had to be some way she could help, some way she could tip the scales and add her strength to Valerie’s. She remembered Pete’s battle with Jade, and how she had tried, desperately ignorant of how, to help him. And she had helped; Pete had said so. She had been like an anchor, Pete had said. She had kept him from sinking.

Sarah crossed the room and crouched beside Valerie. She touched Valerie’s shoulder and leaned close. “Valerie, this is Sarah. I’m here with you, right beside you. Can you hear me? Can you understand? I want to help you. Let me help you.” Valerie’s eyes opened and she stared at Sarah. Then the bloodshot, grey-green eyes focused, and Sarah knew that Valerie was seeing her. Her heart leaped up in hope.

Then Valerie’s eyes narrowed and her teeth showed in a snarl. She let out an inarticulate growl and her hands came up, grasped Sarah’s arms, and threw her away with astonishing strength.

Sarah cried out in pain from her injured arm. She scrambled to her feet and, feeling dizzy and sick, approached Valerie again, but more cautiously this time.

It all happened very quickly after that.

As Sarah watched, wary of the knife Valerie still had, she saw Valerie go very still and stiff, and then her body shuddered, as if a current had passed through her. When it passed, Valerie rose from the floor and looked at Sarah, smiling.

The smile, broad and gloating and cruel, was not Valerie’s smile.

Her eyes had a hard, yellow gleam which Sarah recognized and which chilled her. It wasn’t Valerie looking out of those eyes anymore.

As Sarah watched, waiting in agony for what would happen next, trying to plan her own escape, the yellow light flickered in Valerie’s eyes and went out.

“No,” said Valerie, her voice firm.

Sarah held her breath, hoping.

Valerie raised the hand that held the bloodstained knife. She was looking straight at Sarah. Very little space separated them; in a step Valerie could be upon her, slashing and stabbing. But Sarah did not move. She did not even breathe. She concentrated on Valerie, trying to read those flickering, changing eyes; trying to reach the Valerie who was fighting for existence. She did not dare move, afraid of tipping the balance the wrong way. She could only watch, and hope, and concentrate as hard as she could, hoping her thoughts had some power. Valerie, she thought. Don’t let him have you. Hang on. Kill that bastard!

“Kill you,” said Valerie.

And her arm came up and around in a gentle, perfect curve, and the knife bit deeply, surely, irrevocably into Valerie’s own throat.

And as her life’s blood spurted out, in the seconds before she died, Valerie, most improbably, smiled. It was her own smile.

Chapter Fifteen

Now, after more than a week away, she was home again.

Sarah sat in her car and stared at the house and wondered why she had come. Was it just stubbornness? After all that had happened, anyone else would have given up the house and moved elsewhere with a feeling of relief. What was she trying to prove, and to whom?

Part of the reason she had come back, Sarah knew, was that she didn’t want to go on living with the Marchants. Beverly was her friend again—all problems had been buried when she saw that Sarah needed her—but Pete was not. Things were not the same among the three of them, and Sarah wondered if they would ever be. He kept his distance. No matter what they talked about, Pete was guarded, as if he could not trust her. And he looked at her with a coldness that made her want to cry.

There was an apartment in the Marchants’ complex which was available. She could move there easily enough. Perhaps she would. It wasn’t giving in, to move. It wasn’t an admission of defeat. But that decision couldn’t help her now. She might decide not to live here, but she had to go back inside, at least this once. If only to prove to herself that Jade was gone.

Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do, because you have to, she told herself as she got out of the car and walked towards the house.

The last time she had seen it there had been an ambulance and two police cars behind the house, and she had been trying to give the police some sort of coherent story. She had telephoned for help within a minute of Valerie’s cutting her own throat—telephoned, and then, still afraid Jade would have some last deadly trap waiting for her, had bolted out of the house, and waited on the street below as the sound of sirens came nearer.